The Myth of Air Control Reassessing the History

Aerospace Power Journal, Winter, 2000 by Dr. James S. Corum

The 60,200 British troops in the country when the rebellion began were hard-pressed simply to hold on. Small British garrisons in the hinterlands were surrounded and wiped out. The Kurd and Arab rebels were not the primitive and poorly armed tribesmen that the British had faced in Somaliland. When the Turkish Empire had collapsed, large stocks of modern arms and ammunition throughout Syria and Mesopotamia fell into the hands of local tribesmen, equipping the rebels with modern rifles and machine guns. [12] Many of the leaders of the revolt had served in the Ottoman and Arab armies during the war and had a pretty good understanding of modern warfare. They were not likely to be overawed by British aircraft and technology. [13]

The hard-pressed British garrison called for army and air force reinforcements. Nineteen battalions (4,883 British and 24,508 Indian army troops) as well as two additional RAF squadrons were dispatched to Iraq to reinforce the two squadrons already in the country. [14] By August the British were able to mount a successful counteroffensive that stamped out the rebellion by the end of the year. The RAY squadrons performed sterling service in evacuating British personnel, dropping supplies on besieged outposts, and performing constant reconnaissance and bombing missions in support of the ground forces. The Iraqi rebellion of 1920 amounted to a fairly large conventional war, and some major pitched battles occurred between the rebels and British forces. At Rumaitha on 13 October, a three-thousand-man rebel force dug in and stood up to a daylong attack by a British brigade. Starting at 0800, the British pummeled the Iraqis with artillery, and RAF aircraft relentlessly bombed the defenders. Finally, under the weigh t of a full-brigade attack, the rebels broke and retreated in disorder at 1700. [15] The British suppressed the rebellion but at a cost of 1,040 killed and missing soldiers and 1,228 wounded--not to mention an estimated 8,450 dead Iraqi rebels. [16] The financial cost of the enterprise also shocked the British government. In order to maintain control of a minor colonial mandate with little strategic value, British military operations had cost the treasury 40 million pounds, considerably more than Britain had spent in supporting the Arab revolt against the Turks in World War I.

Iraq proved such a drain of manpower and resources that when the RAF offered to garrison the country at minimal cost, the British government welcomed the idea. On 1 October 1922, the RAF assumed control of military forces in Iraq, marking the first time that an airman directed all military operations in a country. [17] The British government could then announce that it had pulled all army forces out of Iraq at great savings to the taxpayer. Henceforth, the military garrison in Iraq would consist of eight RAF squadrons and four RAF armored-car companies. [18] The British recruited five thousand of the 15,000 local Iraqi levies and police and organized them as the core of an Iraqi army. These local forces would be British equipped, officered, and trained but supported by revenues of the Iraqi state. [19]